


Sarah's Eye

by TeaRoses



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28218417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: A mysterious old woman gives Jamie advice in one of the Manor's gardens.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Sarah's Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SuperKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperKat/gifts).



The small garden just at the edge of the Manor’s grounds was an old place. It was pretty, especially in the spring, full of roses of all colors and a few daisies surrounded by a low stone wall. Jamie knew the garden had changed over the years, but the wall was from the seventeenth century, or so she had been told. And Jamie always planted roses there, because even without being told, she was sure that roses belonged in the little garden.

Jamie was working there one day, covered with dirt and trying not to think about the new au pair at the Manor, when a woman came through the wrought iron gate. She was an elderly woman, wearing an outfit that looked straight out of a Jane Austen adaptation. A bonnet covered all of her hair, though Jamie presumed it must be white, and her gray dress was down to her ankles. 

“May I help you?” said Jamie, perhaps a touch rudely.

The woman looked startled, as if she didn’t expect anyone to be there, even though Jamie was right in front of her.

“Oh, no dear,” she said. “I’m just a – a guest here at the Manor.” The way she stumbled over the word “guest” was a bit odd, but Jamie knew guests came to stay at the Manor at times and as the gardener she was not always informed. They didn’t usually have fancy dress parties in the middle of the afternoon, however.

“My name is Grace,” the woman continued.

Jamie introduced herself, but out of politeness didn’t extend her dirty hand.

“This garden is such a lovely place,” Grace said, taking a seat on a low stone bench. “It was left to ruin for so long, and now it’s beautiful.”

Jamie couldn’t remember at time when this garden had been a ruin. The family had always been very fastidious about the grounds, at least as far as she knew. But this woman might remember a time long before Jamie was born.

“Do you know who created this garden?” the woman asked. “Or ordered it created – I’m sure she never put her own hands in the dirt.”

Jamie shook her head.

“Well, all this happened long before I was born, you see, but it was a woman named Viola. Her story has been passed down among us.”

“Among who?” asked Jamie, wondering if it should be “whom” and also wondering what the hell Grace was talking about.

“Oh, I meant… among the family, dear. You see, Viola was one of the first ones here, and she built this garden for her little daughter.”

Clearly this woman was eccentric and that was a polite way of putting it, but Jamie wasn’t in a hurry to get her to go away. 

“Viola loved her daughter very much, and she didn’t love many besides herself and her sister, to be honest. She had consumption, you see, and she went a bit mad with it.”

Jamie had a vague memory from school that “consumption” was the old name for tuberculosis, but she had never heard anyone call it that. There was something weird going on here, though she couldn’t put a name to it yet.

“One of the last times she ever held her daughter was here in this garden. She already knew she was dying, and all she wanted was for her daughter to inherit the Manor and have her own children there. But her daughter was still very young, then. I’ve heard she sat in the sun with Isabel, for that was the little girl’s name, and sang to her for hours. “Oh Willow Waly”, that was Isabel’s favorite.”

Jamie knew that song, and knew it was very old, but didn’t remember hearing it sung at the Manor. 

“Is all this about Viola written down in a book or something?” asked Jamie, still bemused.

“I doubt it. But people told others the story. Viola sat here with her little girl Isabel and sang to her, and told her someday she would be a beautiful woman and sit in this garden.”

Jamie looked at her curiously. “And did she? Sit in this garden?”

“She may have. No one has told me that, to be honest. But Viola had a very hard life, though that doesn’t explain all she did afterwards, and I hope her daughter had a better one.”

“All she did afterwards?” asked Jamie. “After her life?”

“Is that what I said?” Grace asked. “I’m sure I made a mistake, then.” 

Jamie was pretty sure she was actually hearing and seeing all of this, and that this woman wasn’t a random nutter in old clothes. She seemed too gentle, too composed. In fact Jamie was starting to wonder if there was a supernatural explanation for what was happening. Weren't people in the town always saying the Manor was haunted? Jamie wasn’t frightened, though. She was a brave woman, and she could tell that this person, whoever and whatever she was, didn’t mean her any harm.

“But here I am going on about these old stories and I haven’t even asked about you!” the woman said.

“Oh,” said Jamie. “I’m just the gardener, though I suppose that’s pretty obvious, and I’m sure if I told you what’s on my mind you’d be very shocked.” Jamie couldn’t see any reason not to tell this person the truth, especially since it was now becoming clear that she was not a guest at the Manor, at least in this century.

“I’m not shocked easily dear, not anymore.”

“I think I’m falling in love with someone,” Jamie answered.

“Well, that’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“It’s a woman,” said Jamie. That still shocked some people even younger than Grace, but the old woman only laughed.

“I loved a woman, too, once,” Grace said. “Her name was Sarah, and we went to school together. She was so lovely, with dark eyes and black hair.”

Jamie was both surprised and intrigued, and nodded at the woman to continue her story.

“She was wealthy, but her family was very charitable with what they had. Sarah used to play the harp, and I would sit and listen for hours. No one thought me being devoted to her was strange. Admiring another woman was quite acceptable. But if I had told them I wished I could marry Sarah instead of a man, well… in those days people didn’t talk about such things except in rumors.”

Grace lifted up a pendant that was hanging from a chain around her neck so that Jamie could see it. It showed a human eye with a dark brown iris, intricately drawn. Jamie looked at it in fascination. “This is Sarah’s eye. That was the fashion then, drawing people’s eyes. I always kept it with me. I often wish I had at least told her. All I can say to you is that love is worth chasing after and catching, no matter who it is.”

Somehow Jamie was not surprised by the woman’s frankness. She looked down at the roses and when she lifted her head again Grace was gone. It was hard to believe they’d even had this conversation, but they definitely had. When she walked up to the Manor and asked if there were guests, she was not particularly surprised to find out that there was no one named Grace and definitely no one in an outfit like that. But she wasn’t about to start saying she’d seen a ghost. She didn’t want everyone to think she’d gone mad herself.

Of course, it was not long after that that Jamie came to believe very strongly in ghosts, and all that pushed the conversation with Grace out of her mind.

Years later, Dani would speak of Viola, as she had her memories now. Eventually she told the story of Viola’s life, and of the horrors she committed afterwards. Jamie understood then what the old woman in the garden had been talking about.

Now and then Jamie would see a flash of Viola herself in Dani, which frightened both of them, but it helped that Jamie remembered what Grace had told her. Some nights, when Dani’s eyes grew shadowed and she looked terrified and angry in a way that Dani never did, Jamie leaned forward and sang “Oh Willow Waly” softly until Dani came back to herself.

Even under the shadow of Viola, going after love had been more than worth it, and often she remembered Grace and her advice as she held Dani in her arms. She hoped that in whatever world Grace might be now, Sarah was there too.


End file.
